The Wild
August 1st, 2010
The Dream, Henri Rousseau. 1910
“We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.” Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
For most of our 2 million year evolutionary history, we lived as hunters and gatherers. We became fully human around 250,000 years ago - give or take 100,000 years. We were nomadic. Lived in wide open spaces, and in tribes of no more than 150. Seldom, if ever, would our tribe run into other tribes, and if so we probably just moved on.
What was there to fight for?
Other humans were few; grazeable land was plentiful. We gathered nuts and other wild vegetation. We chased down birds, insects, fish, rodents, and an occasional bear or elk. And when the food gave out? Or, some natural catastrophe struck — like a flood, fire, or volcano eruption? The survivors ambled on — following their eyes and noses to more ample pastures. The earth was our oyster. No pollution, oil spills, trespassing signs, fences, private property, militarized zones, or cars to dodge.
Richard Lee’s work on the !Kung Sun bushmen of the Kalahari Desert wrote that these hunter-gatherers spend only fifteen hours a week gathering food — the rest is down time. And this in the desert, no less. “A woman gathers on one day enough food to feed her family for three days, and spends the rest of her time resting in camp, doing embroidery, visiting other camps, or entertaining visitors.”
If you can wrap your mind around the thought that humans of 250,000 years ago were not that different emotionally and mentally from humans today, you can imagine how it must have been to have plenty of time to lay back. (Or can you?) A day or two of light work followed by three days off trying to figure what to do with yourself. Imagine. No e-mail to check. No text messages. No deadlines, traffic jams, jaunts to the gym, mortgage payments, supermarkets, or business lunches. Plenty of time to just stare out into space. Fool around. Daydream. Play. Mate. Contemplate. This life is our evolutionary heritage. It’s how we are wired to live.
The Wild, Barnett Newman. 1950
Have the demands of modern life robbed us of our healthy inclination to sit and ponder for hours on end? This question was among the thoughts that struck me when we were stopped in our tracks by the painting, The Wild by Barnett Newman, at the Museum of Modern Art. It looks like a painted tomato stake, but it’s truly a stretched canvas. 8 feet high. 1 1/2 inches wide. Cadmium red down the center with gray-blue down each side.
We had been provoked out of our rushed ways. Our art-at-a-trot pace came to an abrupt halt.
My daughter and I stood in front of this piece contemplating — is it art, is it not? Why is it here? Why shouldn’t it be? What if a third grader would have painted that same thing? What is its intent? How does this absurd 8 x 1 1/2 canvas reflect the entirety of the history of art and the conversation art has with itself? It was a contemplative brawl we ended up taking out into the streets.
Jeanette Winterson in her book Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery, challenges us to consider what it would be to spend one entire hour with just one painting. We’d soon get irritated. Impatient. The speed of our daily lives won’t allow it. “Why doesn’t the picture do something!” The same could be said for a poem. A petroglyph. A cloud. A mountain. A stream. A spiderweb. A bird’s flight. A blade of grass. Look! Move on! Get to the next sensation — quick! There are things to do, places to go, emails to get to!
We’ve filled ourselves with the self-importance of so much work-a-day activity. And when we’re not on the move, how many of us fully sink into the healing, contemplative joy of doing nothing? There’s always the next thing, or that thing undone yapping at the screen door of our conscious awareness.
Stop. Give yourself permission. Fart around. Paint a tomato stake red and call it art. In the quiet stillness of doing nothing but pondering the complexity or simplicity of whatever happens to be in front of you, maybe you’ll find what our ancestors had at their fingertips every day…
…a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.